2005-11
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 10/31/2005
A good war-date Union soldier's 3 1/2 pp. 8vo., letter written in ink by a corporal in McClellan's army, Camp Yorktown, [Va.], May 2, 1862 to his mother concerning digging trenches and dogging cannon balls outside of Yorktown, read, in part: "…we have built a line of forts and trenches just like the secesh & running parallel to theirs 600 yards distant. We have had to build…all of it in the night. In many places they would knock the dirt back in the trenches with cannon balls as fast as we would pitch it out…one night they threw about 300 shells at the trench that our reg[iment] was at work in…when we saw the flash of the guns we would lay down in the trench and let the shell pass over us then jump up and dig the best we knew how till we saw the flash and down we would go on our faces in the bottom again…in the morning we had a splendid rifle-pit right under their biggest fort. They are trying to throw shell into our camp today. They strike on all sides of it but as [of] yet none has exploded in camp. Today one man had both feet torn off by a shell…Gen. McClellan started for Washington this morning…one shell burst just now in a pond…close to our camp…our camp is…between…[Prof. Lowe's] balloon and the pond…we will have to move from here before long as the shells come over…too fast. Almost as fast as we can dog them so we don't have much time for anything else. I presume there has been 50 men killed and wounded with[in] half a mile of here since I have been writing this…". Light toning, else very good.
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